Hope I don’t seem like I’m supporting right-wing governments.
They merely chant ‘austerity!’ as you point out. They chant it, they don’t do it.
Which is another problem with politics, on both sides of the fence.
Left or Right, they have their slogans, and as beautiful as those slogans may be, those promises, whatever they are, as beautiful as they may be, Right or Left, it’s not uncommon to see that their actions don’t match their words.
You don’t at all seem like you’re supporting right wing governments. I was just elaborating on the dynamic you described as I see things here in the UK right now.
Basically, the economy is fucked. There’s no solution for them or us given the choices we’ve already made, within the present setup. It cannot be reformed to make it work properly.
Sure, at least in terms of parties the whole left-right thing is a farce. I think the spectrum sorta exists but not in any useful sense. As I see it, you’ve got people who think you can reform the state capitalist system to make it work, and you’ve got those who don’t think you can do that. Obviously, I don’t. I think it’s critically fucked.
Yes, actually Austerity is a ‘Austrian Invention’ of The Austrian Schools of Economics. Von Mises did alot to low down the rise of hyperinflation within Austria that caused the collpase of the neighboring Weimar Republic. The reason for the calls for Austerity today was because people were scared of having to walk around without bending their knees again save, marching to shitty ass tunes and having to kill one another off.
The was what happened last time hyperinflation hit. Von Mises called everyone on it way in advance, no one bought into it till it was too late, and all he could do was stimmy the localize effects before hitler rose into power. We’re expected to fall back into it within ten years, Europe and North America.
What is necessary here is to understand the thought processes that lead people to dismiss it last time, and the demogogry and quickness to dismiss on a rhetorical basis (this thread especially, starting with the OP, working down to Smears) on the basis of categorical assertion of authority of group bais and conservation of pleasure retrospect to ‘cultural time’.
We have a expectation that our way of life, our culture, is immutable by means of reasoning, and that our values are concrete with what we see. ‘I am a good person, I have a good education, I have security through house, reliable job, family and community networks. I suppose I care, and my thoughts on society- their depth, is about as deep as the complexity that society possesses. My understandings and biases are the foundation of economics, and since I am not a butt flap wearing barbarian, like they were during these times of economic collapse in the past, it won’t happen now, as I am better than that, my political party’s line is better than that, and we have a assured future. It’s these ‘other fuckups’ whop are dragging us down’.
In this mindset, time and culture share the same bubble- my life as it is is all it needs to be, and it won’t change very much, except for the better’. We give up elements of control for a externally generated opinion of the world informing us of how things infact are. This allows us to take risks, as everything is ordered and in place. We live in a predictible universe of a revealed truth, and can pursue pleasure at a greater rate and yeild without much concern for the eventuality of risk, as it will be minimal at best… a little pain, and if we were illegal in the process, it was only a little illegal, a small slap on the wrist, and it can be changed, as it’s modular.
This is the exact same mentality that usually preceeds economic collapses… stagnant ponds breeds mosquitoes. The vast majority of societies both in the west and in Europe are split up o dichotomies- easy access to liberal pleasure, and the needless pain of austerity than can be easily dodged on the basis of ‘reason’… pleasure driven reason.
Right now, say the united states is roughtly 400 million people (not quite that, but soon) and 16 trillion in debt, we’ve racked up 40,000 dollars of debt per person. How many times can you multiply that into say, Bill Gates’ entire financial holdings, or that of our other billionaires? Not very much, we fall dramatically short by taking every cent we possibly can from them. $40,000 in debt isn’t very much, to someone who makes say, 100,000 a year, but we don’t possess very many people who can pull that off. We can print up more money, add 16 trillion magic dollars taken from thin air with Obama’s picture on it giving everyone a hugh thumbs up, and say ‘fuck, debt’s paid off’, but that in and of itself will plunge us into Hyperinflation. Your savings won’t mean shit, as our international creditors won’t accept this monopoly money. We know this because they didn’t accept it in the past, and the Chinese, Indians, and Russians don’t seem the compassionate, understanding type who are going to look past these issues of the debt we owe them.
Right now, given who’s in office, I doubt very much we can hold off a hyperinflation from occuring, it almost certain will. The only way you can systemmatically hit head on a runaway inflation is to drastically incure stability measures to what’s still solid and alive in the economy, essentially guaranting whoever still has economic power (the survivors of the economic collapse) that the government isn’t going to fuck around or needlessly manipulate the currency anymore, andwill bring sanity to the system of taxation, in it’s form of assessment and collection, putting firm, predictible limits on it. If we don’t, then those businesses either have to hide from the government, which admittedly hurts business, declare their independence in a sense, such as the mafia, of collapse like half the businesses around them did.
The US and Europe used to be on a gold standard. It has profound limitations, but our understanding of value and accounting evolved from it, and most people are still very much attracted to it, in a time of hyperinflation, paper and credit currency has next to no value. Solid, real world assets do. Gold is only as useful as people believe it to be, so if you ask people on the street in your area ‘hey, if someone gave you a bar of gold, would you accept it’ and they say yes over the alternative, a brick from some old fireplace, then you can savely assume most people will accept gold in a time of crises.
Bigger businesses have assests on their books. These assests make much of their value. Bill Gates wealth isn’t purely liquid and abstract, in the bank account. It’s in real world assests that employ and in a sane world, helps the economy grow. You take everything from the rich, we’ve essentially lost the ability to do business… and everyone as a result ends up unemployed, eventually homeless from not being able to pay local taxes, and roaming the countryside looking for food, shanking one another for control of the best ditch to live in. It’s a Jack London hobo time, and I don’t think most of you will come out on top in that system.
Austerity does much to head off monumental buildup in credit. Our credit relies on the believability of debt, the credibility of credit as being something we can rely on. The cafe down the street isn’t going to accept your credit card purchase if everytime the end of the month comes around, they go to collect on the credit owed to them, and nothing comes back to them, because the bank doesn’t have anything, because out exports keep getting seized in foreign ports to pay for out nations debt, and our sales that do occure internally and externally are bucking around widely in infaltion and deflation to the whims of every current and fantasy of the mind, the one consistent act in all the chaos is a absolute indifference to any fiat claim by a central authority as it’s become hopelessly unreliable, untrustworthy- more a source of harm than help.
The left during the Bush administration and during Obama’s term didn’t quite understand this. They became very liberal and accpeting of the plight of poverty during the Clinton administration- we started losing our core industrial industries, in my area we were especially hard hit with Clinton’s sledgehammer tactics against Steel- which is useful for making a whole lot of other things, propping up our dollar- which is the means we make our way through the world- but we encouraged some policies in our banking system, manipulating how credit is ascertained so we can artificially increase the number of middle class americans by making a whole slew of people home owners through some shit headed mortgades. This ‘could of worked’ had the economy not entered into a period of reexamination when trying to assess the war debt in the hysteria that occured during the reaction to the Bush Administration. It was ‘holy fucking shit, how can we be paying for this shit’. I remember, I had to stop everything I was doing while deployed to the triangle of death in Iraq to count every last thing we had in a absurd inventory on our base to make the democrats feel fiscally aware of everything that was being spent. Then the old arguements that 'we’re the richest country in the world, and ‘statistically’ we’re systemmatically in the worst category of everything there is in terms of a socialist outlook… how the fuck is this the case, we need to spend less on war and more on social welfare.
Well, the argument isn’t without merit… but the examples they offer, Europe in particular, is horrible as the US is a major payer into European socialism in the first place- they can’t make it work on their own. We research the bulk of their drugs- drug companies have Research and Development costs, and go all over the map, it’s not a republic of science, but a oligarchy of the possibilities of competent investment into the possible, that the Europeans then legally inforce a fiat cost on- drug companies are NOT ALLOWED to sell at reasonable prices, but state mandated prices, and so the costs have been paid increasingly by americans to entice the drug companies to fund the research in the first place. The european drug industry isn’t doing too good, despite their claims of finding alternative means of funding through universities. The universities only research a fraction of what american companies look into.
As a result, our drug industry is unraveling. Investors don’t want to invest into companies expected to do shitty, and so our medical progress is being undercutted. Our ability to research new solutions severly undercutted. The medicines we got are pretty much the medicines we’re going to have when we grow old, don’t expect too many miracle drugs- which America is renown for, to come out in the future- we’ll get a few, but not very many.
Another aspect we’ve been propping them is NATO- Europe is completely unable to defend itself. During the Bush administration, we tried to remedy this- the border nations for NATO: Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, with some minor participation by the baltics, were brought into the war. Iraq was the antipole of the European threat theater- the farthest point that could realistically put up a threat of future invasion down the road. A caliphate could easily be structured there, spreading to north africa and turkey. They came in, and excpet for Poland, each nation took a massive shit on itself, completely unable to function. The insanity that was Falluja was their failure. The option of bringing in the Republic of Georgia, which borders a NATO Nation, balancing out the Black Sea/Caspian Sea threat of Russia and Iran, was the furthest logical extent of NATO that was applicable then. Europeans folded, again shitting on themselves when Russia invaded Georgia.
Europe backed out, calling the US warmongers. But then when their oil supply when to shit with Libya, suddenly we got dragged into a war the bulk of the European assets of NATO should of easily of overtaken. They couldn’t muster squat. It wasn’t a war for desprate love of the Libyan people, or a war designed to reduce long term risk to terrorism and international threat like Iraq… it really was ONLY about the oil, and everyside knew it. All the negative propaganda thrown at the Iraq and Afganistan wars were accepted joyfully in Libya, and the Europeans couldn’t make it happen on their own. Their airforce was worthless, as Qaddafi had anti-air capacity designed during the heigh of soviet power. Their navy capacity was pathetic, and their mech forces- tanks and infantry, would of taken mass causalties in any amphibious landing, and using a neighboring state would of dragged the war unwantedly to them.
We’re basically funding the failures of the European system by assuring the Europeans are strong enough to function- via US tax dollars. Those dollars are being systemmatically undermined by the EURO, as both are fiat currencies and are forced to expand, must seek attention like any attention whore- and requires love and acceptance. However, the EURO doesn’t do squat for funding European defence or drug research, and doesn’t do much to keep the US doing, which is the European sugar daddy.
Most everything comming out of European mouths for this reason are baseless and worthless, they are not even aware of the source of their own wealth, or the fragility of their culture and nature.
US has several advantages in containing Hyperinflation ONCE it occurs. It is, after all, 40,000 dollars. Our bankruptcy courts won’t be able to systemmatically disperse this in real time when the bancruptcies start ralling in- fuck, we don’t even have that many lawyers that specialize in bancruptcy to get everyone going. Alot of the credit is going to be delt with off the books, outside of out tax system. Alot of jobs will be lost- I mean ALOT, but at the same time the debt we HAD on the government level will be frozen at the dollar value of what the debt WAS. We will own 16 trillion… but our dollar is going to be worth much less than a dollar today, requiring much more to buy for it. Essentially, we can pay it all off for 8 trillion or 4 trillion. But it’s Obama, and if it hits during his administration, the dumbfuck is probably going to tax out even more debt from the chinese promising to owe them more, requiring more and more and more debt payoffs until everyone sitting in the streets are going to look at him like a idiot, as the hyperinflation will make such actions meaningless. It’s not without consequence to adding to the debt, but alot of it is just going to be accorded seamlessly into the old debt as unreal dollars devalued into nothingness.
IRS can and will adjust, taking materials… the metal in our buildings, the crops in our fields, as the standard of the dollar- it’s the only realistic way they can. The old car dealership that’s been around, and can’t sell shit anymore because no one can afford cars, will be demolished. Some of the recycling will take place in the US, but again, thanks to Clinton, alot of stuff is going to be sent overseas to west africa and asia to be recycled, meaning our recovery is going to be that much slower.
Another advantage the US has is our particioning of the currency between market fluxuating dollars and Foodstamps administered by the department of agriculture, that allows for farmers to use as limited currency to by machinery- and the food depot system we’ve since established since the last great depression that allowes for the existence of massive supermarket chains. Alot of people unemployed are not going to be building Hoover Dams. Sorry- your labor as a philosopher on this forum doesn’t make for a good construction worker. Your ass is going to be picking berries. There isn’t much of a way around this… it’s not really even up to us- our main debt holder, China, while being a major exporter of foodstuff, such as farm raised fish- imports MUCH MORE food from the US. They tried making claims through the 90s that they were ‘barely self sufficient’ but it’s since become obvious they are not. The Chinese have been doubling their cities food storage capacity, trying to get as much frozen foods into deep storage to match sudden fluxuations in the market. They are pushing much harder than they have historically, knowing the margin for failure has bad consequences, as most Chinese now abhor the days of starvation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution- it’s a black mark on their history, and they are very open about it. It’s going to be a major aspect of how we’re going to be reemployed- your solid job you have now to a farm worker sleeping in a tent and showering out in a field during harvest season for those Obama Bucks.
If our currency goes to shit- as Americans, we don’t have much of a choice, and the alternative isn’t that bad… I’d rather be a farm worker coerced by the unemployment office to jump of the Department of Agriculture’s bus for a season of labor somewhere else on the continent than being in say- THE ISLAND OF ENGLAND, what doesn’t have the capacity to produce food for it’s own needs.
A few counter intuitive tools can be useful in the short term. Despite the need to preserve businesses, and the harm it will do to them in throwing business contracts into chaos, causing more unemplyment, raising the minumum raise will effectively absorb THE DEBT AS IT IS to a greater degree than austerity could, though I recommend doing both. The government would get more to pay for it- however, the cost of the debt uncollected will inturn go up, as costs for implementation will go up. We might get lucky and find the ObamaCare system collapses under the wage increase, as everyone has to pay more, but the fixed costs in it under the old system rates can’t realistically collect enough to function, rendering the system inoperable on a greater whole. It’s not to dissimilar to a malfunction in NATO spending leading to the US unable to spend money on forces overseas can have benificial debt reducing benifits as we simply can’t spend the money on systems we’re unable to implement. However, this is also as likely to encourage the hyperinflation dive as blantant incompetency would be seen by a increasing segment of the population.
Obama’s medical system can for a short term TAKE some of the debt (debt it produced) by employing people for a time- but these are people who would of gotten care under the old system as much as the new- just puts costs on the tax payer more and more instread of the individual, because we’re so frightened of dying people driving up their debt in their last days. The doctors were required to give the medical services, and collection companies are restrained from how they collect. This is largely about inheiritors losing their parents estates to creditors- but in the new system, they’ll have to loose it anyway, because a few extra CNAs have to be payed for in mega hospitals and sterile hospices instead of having surgery in the hospital, returning home, and hiring a CNA or nurse to visit for a few hours a week, or relying on poor clinics (my state has the Patch Adams system- he designed it for us, it’s run by charities).
The Obama system runs into the problem of how the fuck are we going to pay for it- and we can’t. It’s all credit, debt associated. When we dropped the Gold standard, we went to Petro dollars from middle eastern nations as our source of credit, and they in turn bought everything with dollars- and everyone had dollars around the world they needed to spend. In a medical centric system, there is ONLY ASYTEMIC LOSS. Yes, it can get the guy with the broken arm back to work- but the guy with the broken arm in the old system could get the medical help he needed, just had to pay for it via paying his medical bills. Most of our costs is just going to go down a big dark financial whole, but that money is borrowed always from someone- will keep growing… but internationally, unlike petro dollars, international nations won’t have as much need for Obama Bucks, as it’s not going to be worth anything. Our treasure bonds won’t be worth very much knowing we can’t pay increasingly the rates other countries with a more soli economic basis can pay. Our dollars will be backed by nothing- and that’s what we will pay, that’s what our businesses will use, and we won’t be able to import very much. Our exports would be our bread and butter- but our goods are no longer unique or valuable in comparison to what other nations are now able to produce.
The other clear and obvious option is our Oil Industry- instead of foreign petro dollars, we would invest internally. The bad side is- the worth of our currency would increase. Say kuwait back in the 60s had 100 billion in debt via kuwaiti dollars- but then after their oil boom, when their currency went from shit to gold, their dollar became 1 to every 20 US dollars. Suddenly they owe a shitload more, as their debt was marked in that other currency value of next to nothingness. We’ll end up paying a hell of a lot more than 16 trillion… unless we do something like build a second currency based only on petro/natural gas dollars as opposed to the old fiat currency, with rates between the two, paying off the old with the export funds generated from the new. But even if we don’t, and just say fuck it, and pay for it- we will significantly undercut hyperinflation… it hard to imagine hyperinflation occuring when a sudden goldrush appears out of nowhere.
The US is lucky it has such massive oil and gas reserves. We only have to look at forum member GIb and his town in Canada- it’s absurdly rich, higher than both the Canadian and American standard, and runs off a energy industry that hacks violently into the earth, sells carbon laiden products to the Americans without qualm… in exchange, they made their community into a little eco-utopia isolated from the reality of what they are infact doing to the larger world, quite hipocritically. We can do that here… there is no reason why we can’t, and we could actually fund this crap Obama wants.
Austerity: Cut Obama Care, Cut NATO, pull back troops and pay off the debt to more realistic and managable levels, maintaining the status quo otherwise.
Refusing Austerity: SPEND SPEND SPEND= Your a farm worker, pulling ticks off your legs as some farmer in Indiana is standing over you saying if you want paid, you gotta pick faster, or else he’ll tell the Department of Agriculture you’ve been fucking around. You won’t get medical care for you injuries you get much beyond some rubbing alchohol tossed to you. Your degree is going to be worthless, as degrees are only useful to employed people who can use that degree- your field has been significantly curtailed drom the economic collapse during the hyperinflation, so just shut up, pick berries, and grumble away. If you get out of line, the security guard they hired- ME, will escort you off the property. I will make twice what your making. Life will suck.
Invest in self-sustaining industry of value both internally and externally- We all get to work, because out currency is worth something. Our kids will grow strong, and will travel on spaceships, exploring the depths of the unknown. Humanity will prosper. We can afford to educate men to higher and more complex standards, while ensuring the survival of idiots advocating a Keynian attitude of spending out of a depression, as we will be strong enough to overcome their incompetency. We’ll actually be able to bankroll our socialism, and quite competently, without risking a complete collapse of our currency and starvation in several other nations, such as China and England, all because you don’t understand, and want it all now, because your a mouthbreather, and never was able to comprehend much of anything is life for what it is, and how it relates to past experience.
The spice must flow… stupidity causes it to congeal.
Would that be the same Von Mises who is heroised by the Libertarians and Ayn Randians despite being sponsored by the Rockefellers?
Beware false heroes.
The very same.
Anyone associated with the Austrian School is an idealogue first, an economist second.
FJ, that’s one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for the link. It’s a very true and very real exposition of how US politics works now. =D>
How can that be changed, however, in this current emotional era of non-thought? Does the dilemma come about because of professional politicians or because of frenetic followers of one “side” or another?
Well, I think that it’s kinda like how the article sums it up:
you support the Blues or the Greens, and they chant Cheaper Tickets and you chant Cheaper Tickets, but it’s against the rules to point out, “Hey, what the fuck, we’re not getting cheaper tickets.” The rest of the fans punish you for saying that, and ignore that.
This article is a potential solution, but would of course only work if the rest of the population were intelligent enough to differentiate between a nincompoop and a non-nincompoop. Dunno how likely that is.